The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess the powers of enchantment and sorcery, attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities at the height of their powers-the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. Profoundly moving and completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world's most important living writers.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
The Writer Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Enchantress of Florence is set in the magical realism of the Renaissance World (Rushdie 2022). The Enchantress of Florence combines fantasy and historical figures in the tradition of magical figures. Many real figures of the Renaissance World appear in the novel from the Mughal Emperor Akbar I (who died in 1605) and the Italian Political Philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (who died in 1527). A fictional relative of the real historical Italian Renaissance explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who died in 1512) is an important character in the novel. Writing The Enchantress of Florence required Rushdie to do a lot of research (Padmanabhan 2008). The Enchantress of Florence has a bibliography. In writing this book, Rushdie was interested in Mughal eras writing on sexual pleasure (Steves 2021). The novel covers a lot of the Renaissance World, but the book is mainly focused on the Mughal Empire and the Italian city of Florence. The Enchantress of Florence of which the novel is named over the course of the book travels over a large portion of the Renaissance World. Rushdie was interested in imagining a figure that connect the Mughal Empire and Renaissance Italy (Steves 2021). Rushdie is a skilled and interesting writer. Salmon Rushdie’s book, The Enchantress of Florence is an interesting and memorable novel about a magical realist view of the Renaissance World.
Work Cited:
Ellis, Lindsay & Meehan, Angelina. 2022, March 31. “Why Magical Realism is a Global Phenomenon | It's Lit.”
Storied. Why Magical Realism is a Global Phenomenon | It's Lit - YouTube
Padmanabhan, Mukund. 2008, April 13. “Imagining the self and the world.” The Hindu (Chennai, India). The Hindu: Magazine: Imagining the self and the world (archive.org)
Steves, Rick. 2021, November 6. “Program 656: On Travel Writing; Antarctic Madhouse; Enchantress of Florence.” Travel with Rick Steves. Retrieved: July 16, 2023. (656 On Travel Writing; Antarctic Madhouse; Enchantress of Florence by Travel with Rick Steves (soundcloud.com)).
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.